Mr. President, My delegation is forced to speak again in this debate in order to reply to the comments that the US Ambassador, who also happens to chair this meeting, has just made. The denunciation presented by Cuba on the release of the notorious international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, is of the utmost importance for all Member States of the United Nations and for the very credibility of the Security Council. Therefore, there cannot be room for manipulations or distortions. Cuba has not come to this debate to made statements riddled with empty rhetoric or puns to conceal the truth. We come here on behalf of the 3 478 Cubans who have died and the 2 099 who have been injured as a result of the countless terrorist actions that have hit the Cuban people for more than 45 years, most of which have been masterminded from US territory, with the support, protection and financing of the successive governments of that country. With total impunity, in Miami and other cities of the country, funds are provided and collected to carry out terrorist actions; bank accounts that finance terrorism are normally and openly run, terrorist are recruited, and those who finance, mastermind and carry out terrorist acts against Cuba are allowed to purchase arms and use those territories. The decision to allow the release of Posada Carriles is the most telling proof of the US government’s double standards and an overwhelming refutation of its alleged fight against terrorism. Do not expect us to willingly accept the hypocrite call to “do as we say and not as we do”. Mr. President, The US Government has gone to really shameful extremes to protect Posada Carriles. Even after he was arrested, months after President Fidel Castro denounced publicly Posada’s presence in US territory, all that country’s government did was to charge him for minor migration crimes. No mention whatsoever was made to terrorism. And it all despite the fact that the US government knows well, and has all the evidence of the countless terrorist acts committed by Posada Carriles. Suffice it to mention but a few examples to illustrate this character’s nature: - Posada Carriles was trained by the CIA at the School of the Americas in 1961. Documents declassified by the US government itself show that, during most of his carreer, Posada kept close links with the CIA. - He masterminded, together with fellow terrorist Orlando Bosh Avila, who walks free the streets of Miami since long ago, the mid-air bombing of a Cubana de Aviación jetliner in front of the coast of Barbados, in 1976, claiming 73 inocent lives. - He participated in the implementation of the genocidal Operation Condor, executed by the Latin-American military dictatorships and the CIA in Latin America to persecute, kidnap, torture, murder and make disappear thousands of people, only on account of their nationalist or leftist ideas. - In 1997 he masterminded a series of terrorist bombings against hotels in Havana. One of them caused the death to the young Italian tourist Fabio Di Celmo. On an interview published in the New York Times on 12 and 13 July 1998, Posada Carriles proudly admitted having commanded that terrorist network. - In November 2000, he was arrested in Panama with three of his accomplices while planning an attempt against President Fidel Castro’s life during the 10th Ibero-American Summit. Posada and his accomplices’ plans were to place a potent C-4 explosive charge in the University of Panama’s Auditorium right at the moment when President Fidel Castro would meet with hundreds of Panamanian students and teachers. There are many questions on the table: Why did the US government allow Posada Carriles in its territory with impunity, despite President Fidel Castro’s alerts? Why did the US government protect him during the months he stayed illegally in its territory? Why, having all the evidence for it, the US government limited itself last January 11 to charge him with petty immigration crimes? Why did the Immigration and Customs Enforcement of the US Department of Homeland Security not use the mechanisms it has available to keep the terrorist in prison? Why has the US government ignored the request for extradition submitted by the government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela with all the usual requirements? For Cuba, the answers to these questions are clear. The plan was preventing Posada Carriles from talking about the terrorist acts he committed against Cuba, Venezuela and other countries at the orders of the CIA, and particularly, the current President of the United States’ father, who headed that espionage and subversion agency of the US government’s in 1975 and 1976, time during which the terrorist actions against Cuba were more violent and merciless, and when he was the Vice-President of the United States during the 1980s, when he implemented the dirty war against the Nicaraguan people. Mr. President, I would like to conclude by reiterating the Cuban Revolutionary Government’s Declaration of last April 19. Even now, after his release, the US government has all the information and legal mechanisms to arrest Posada Carriles again. It only takes the political will to fight terrorism seriously and recall that, according to President Bush “if you harbor a terrorist, if you support a terrorist, if you feed a terrorist, you are as guilty as the terrorists”. Thank you very much.
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